


turn your face towards the shooting star

by borage (haechansheaven)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Character Death, Introspection, M/M, Miya Atsumu-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27158470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haechansheaven/pseuds/borage
Summary: In the shadows of Shoyo’s smile, he looks right into Death’s eyes and asks for more time. The universe, however, will never bend to his wishes. Atsumu is simply its creation and must obey its laws.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	turn your face towards the shooting star

**Author's Note:**

> a big thanks to sandy for beta'ing for me on such a short notice OTL i hope i was able to carefully use the advice and comments you gave me. in the end, i think i ended up tricking myself, though...
> 
> also this is something of a birthday gift to my friend, since she always eggs me on to write angst. OTL happy birthday! sorry it technically passed in our time zone because i am a belligerent idiot.

In a world filled with superheroes, what does the average man become? A bystander? Collateral? Atsumu isn’t completely sure even though he’s lived twenty-one short years. He’s watched buildings burn to the ground, humans awaken, and the world struggle to categorize itself again as changes arise. None of that concerns him, though. His only goal is to live until he dies, the rubble of fallen skyscrapers forming a deadly wall around his body.

Atsumu meets Shoyo at three in the morning in a diner with his dying laptop whirring and realizes that his life can amount to more than half-baked stories and a search for death. Atsumu’s mother once told him that life is a series of coincidences, and Shoyo is proof of that.

Their meeting goes like this:

Shoyo walks in, a little bloody, pretty sweaty, and with a smile bright enough to stop the small population occupying the diner in their tracks. Attraction is something like gravity, after all, and they’re all influenced by the magnetic existence that is Shoyo Hinata. Atsumu is no exception, and it’s easy to let his half-awake attention span find a new target. Not even his sixth cup of watered-down diner coffee can save him.

Everything in life is a coincidence.

Atsumu’s in America to  _ learn _ and learn he does. He learns what it’s like to fall in love, and what it’s like to die.

In the end, everything in Atsumu’s life is very, very red.

Here’s the thing about being young and falling in love: Atsumu doesn’t get it. The understanding of what it means to love someone balances on the tip of his tongue precariously, threatening to fall onto the forest floor, and his mouth is drying out the longer he stands there, trying to swallow it whole. Eventually he’ll give out, lungs parched, and body wrapped in the roots of trees.

For now, though, he’s stable on two feet, watching the sun rise over the horizon like any other day. Three in the morning diner visits become a habit at the same rate that Shoyo sitting across from him in a booth does. Everything happens by chance and Shoyo honoring him with a smile meant  _ just _ for Atsumu is one of those moments.

Three in the morning turns into nine at night, and Atsumu wonders where Shoyo goes sometimes, a frantic  _ rain check?  _ text message received minutes before they’re supposed to meet, buildings collapsing at Atsumu’s feet, and another news story to replace the last.

They’re three years into falling in love and threes are starting to have a hell of a lot of meaning and Atsumu learns that Shoyo is blessed by the sun in more ways than one, and he can fly through the skies and pick up freight trains with one hand, and oh, isn’t he lucky to be dating a real-life Superman?

Shoyo smiles at him with the weight of his secret off his shoulders, and Atsumu picks up his head as he wills himself to stop thinking about what any of this means. It’s enough, he thinks, to just live for now.

-

His superhero name is Sunflower. A gift from his sister who lives far, far away. Atsumu thinks that it makes sense, all things considered, and wonders if, like his namesake, Shoyo’s face follows the sun throughout the day.

He learns, eventually, that it does.

-

Atsumu is born a twin, and the world tells him it’s as much of a miracle as being born with a superpower. He doesn’t think so at first, though it’s nice to have someone by his side who gets him without needing an explanation. They’re not copies of one another; it’s more like the carbon paper was shifted a little, the sheets separated, the text not perfectly aligned. Osamu is like him, but not, and that’s good enough for him.

“You’ve got a funny look in yer eyes,” Osamu says, a country and an ocean away. There’s dust collecting on Atsumu’s computer screen, creating fictional freckles across his brother’s face. “What’s wrong with you?”

He laughs and then admits, “I’m in love.”

“Huh.” There’s a little bit of silence, a great big laugh, some tears, and a nod. “Yeah. It’s like you to fall in love just like that.”

Perhaps it is.

A twin is the world’s way of telling Atsumu that he will never, ever, be alone in the world. Instead, he takes it as a warning, for whatever it means; wrapping himself in the waves that cover the world and letting the sun tan his face until freckles are plants and flowers bloom in their place. You see, Atsumu is the world and the people around him are his inhabitants, and his job is simply to turn in place and let others take care of the important things.

Falling in love is lonely. It’s even lonelier in a country that’s new to you. Osamu tells him, over the phone, that it isn’t even that new, that he’s been there for three whole years, and that the ever sociable Atsumu is never actually alone. The truth is, though, that falling in love is the loneliest thing he’s ever done because the man Atsumu loves flies through the sky and saves the lives of strangers, leaving Atsumu on the ground, shoes covering in dust.

You see, he’s the world, and the people he chooses to keep around him are his inhabitants, and it turns out that Shoyo is a wayfaring man who doesn’t know how to stay in one place for very long. Perhaps that’s why Atsumu looks at him like he’s a shooting star; a meteor disintegrating in his atmosphere, one piece of a whole that he cannot locate.

It’s beautiful watching it fall through the sky; a white streak, burning in the atmosphere. The fire that burns in Atsumu’s core is so very red; warm, though not hot enough to turn the world into ashes. If he is the world, his passion is their demise; red hot and burning bright. It’s alright to let it dester, in the end.

And he can count the number of people he wants to hold close for an eternity on half of one hand. Shoyo is a once in a lifetime event that he wishes could last for forever. Perhaps, instead of a sunflower, he is a meteor, kissing Atsumu hello and goodbye at the same time without ever thinking about looking back. And perhaps he’s okay with being a moment instead of a forever.

Across the room, Shoyo smiles, and Atsumu thinks, yes, anything is fine, even if it’s just a second.

Atsumu kisses Shoyo in front of the ice cream in the supermarket. It’s offhanded for a first kiss, but it suits them in a nice sort of way, after all the three in the morning coffees and stories they’ve shared. The kiss asks for a compromise on the flavor of ice cream, and it makes Atsumu think that they’ve been in love for thousands of days and not just twenty-four.

Their days together are full of moments like this; quiet and private and full of a love that Atsumu thinks that he’d like to keep in his pocket for the rest of his life. Rivers can run red and life can disappear from this planet, and Atsumu will still fall in love with Shoyo all over again.

-

They never move in together because Atsumu’s heart is strong, but not  _ that _ strong, and there’s an inevitability written between the lines of their story that he pretends not to see while preparing for it. He could write a story about them: A little tragedy about a man who loved to watch the stars and the man who kissed him in front of his telescope before disappearing over the edge of the world.

Right, and Atsumu has been in love for five years now in a country that he didn’t grow up in, and happiness for him is a fad that’s destined to disappear.

So, he writes poems instead; poems that Shoyo reads out loud in his kitchen, voice bouncing off the walls and providing the softest of echoes as Atsumu presses his phone tight against his ear, scared to miss even a second. Their time together are moments, and they aren’t even  _ rare _ , but they’re  _ fleeting _ , and so Atsumu holds them close, so tight against his chest that all he breathes are thoughts and voices and pictures and waits for tomorrow.

Shoyo’s face is everywhere, after all. The world will know his fate before Atsumu does, as fucked up as that is. He’ll see Shoyo’s face on the front of a webpage with a headline, and it’ll tell him whether he’s dead or alive. It’s resulted in habits: Atsumu checks his phone right when he wakes up, right before he goes to bed, and every single moment in between. The screen is small, and bright in the darkness in the sort of way that makes him squint, makes him cry.

“Good morning,” is how he starts his day, and, “good night,” is how he ends it, Shoyo’s voice bright and yet gentle enough to wrap around him like clouds.

A small phone screen is how Atsumu learns that Shoyo has died.

From that moment on, time doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t move the way it used to, and Atsumu realizes that, rather than passing, Shoyo is a meteor that has crash landed on Atsumu and buried himself all the way to Atsumu’s core.

Isn’t life a mess?

-

“Why do you keep writing these if they just end up hurting you?”

Atsumu looks at his brother for just a moment because he isn’t sure of the answer. It doesn’t come to him immediately, nor does it come to him through thought. The picture of Osamu on his laptop screen freezes for a second, heavily pixelated, before he moves again, voice and image out of sync. Atsumu replies four days later in the middle of the night, his bedroom dark.

“He liked them.”

“He isn’t here anymore.”

“That doesn’t make a difference, does it?”

“I guess it doesn’t have to.”

-

Shoyo smiles so bright, even in the darkness, that it puts Atsumu’s heart to peace. He can’t put into words the way that Shoyo has pushed his world off course, but he tries to anyways, picking up a pen and the small notebook Osamu sent him—“Got it for free with a purchase at the mart last week. Happy birthday”—and setting on a new journey.

He accumulates enough poems to bind them into a book, sold on street corners in a city that’s always felt cold, but feels a little warmer these days.

-

Atsumu returns home for a funeral and a lesson in self-loathing. He meets Natsu in person for the first time, and it’s a reminder for him that life is unfair and that Shoyo’s life was not just his to hold. There are plenty of people that miss him, and Atsumu’s grief is just one drop in a bucket full of water. This is Shoyo’s world, after all, and he has no control over them.

He meets a man named Kageyama Tobio. Here’s how Atsumu would describe him: Dark eyes, darker hair, dark personality. It’s a warped perception, though, and he thinks that he must look handsome when he smiles.

The suit he wears is uncomfortable, the arms of Shoyo’s mother around him even more so. The hug rubs fabric against his skin, feeling like dry, dying grass halfway through summer. This is one part of how heartbreak feels. Warm and sticky; a summer day with no reprieve, not even when the sun finally sets beyond the horizon.

His tie is red, like a setting sun, like oxidated blood pooling on his skin, like the center of the Earth, festering. Shoyo’s mother smoothes it down, the ends of her fingers pale and coated in tears, the tip of her nose a bright red. He offers her a tissue, because he’s quiet, but not heartless. Everyone watches him like he’s fragile, but a stranger, and Atsumu’s not particularly sure that this is what he expected.

“I don’t know how I feel,” is the most that Atsumu can say. It earns him a black eye; a scene in a place where silence pervades, even between screams. Is it heartbreak? Is it grief? Atsumu’s not sure what this monster that’s taken up home in his heart is. All he knows is that it’s cooled his core, killing the life on his surface. The Earth supports Atsumu, and yet he can no longer sustain his own.

People are pulling Tobio away and, well, Atsumu thinks that he probably deserves this.

When the world has rotated as a product of routine for so, so, long, it’s easy enough for Atsumu to close his eyes and let things go on their way, even as he’s come to a standstill. Death will never be something that Atsumu can look in the eyes. Death’s eyes are forward facing, after all, a sign of a predator. It doesn’t need to turn its head to see what stands right before it.

It’s fucked up.

Shoyo’s outfit is deceptively tame. It’s not as flashy as his hair or his smile, and Atsumu thinks that it makes sense. Anything else would just distract the world as it was being saved. The fabric hangs limply on the wall, a constant reminder of Shoyo’s life outside these walls; outside the place where Atsumu can reach out to him and touch him.

“Aren’t you afraid of dying?” he asks quietly. The movie is only halfway over, but he doesn’t really care. It wasn’t his choice, anyways.

It’s eerie, the way Shoyo’s head turns towards him so slowly, half of it illuminated by the pictures flashing on the television screen. He’s deep in thought, though, and he’s always been considerate like that, even when he didn’t need to be.

Eventually, he answers, “Well, sure,” as if it was obvious. “Why wouldn’t I be? Just because it’s considered a part of the job doesn’t mean I’m ready to die. Just because I’m ready to give my life to save someone else doesn’t mean that I don’t think,  _ What if I prioritized myself _ , once in a while. I’m just a human, in the end.”

The man that the world sees is traveling through a ravine with the memories of a thousand and one deaths mounted on his shoulders. Shoyo has lived his own life and continues living if only for those who died in front of him. It’s a complex sort of situation that Atsumu can’t understand.  _ Be selfish _ , he wants to say.

“I mean, death is scary, don’t you think?” Shoyo smiles, and it shakes a little. “It’s just one of those things you’re better off not thinking about.”

_ It’s just one of those things you can’t help but think about. _

“Yeah,” Atsumu whispers, turning back towards the television. In the shadows of Shoyo’s smile, he looks right into Death’s eyes and asks for more time. The universe, however, will never bend to his wishes. Atsumu is simply its creation and must obey its laws.

Return to the stars.

-

When Atsumu turns twenty-three, Shoyo gifts him with a watch. It’s a little heavy, but it’s pretty, and Shoyo looks at him with eyes so big he can see the outlines of galaxies. The watch becomes part of routine, sliding against his wrist second thing in the morning, only following the lead of a bright screen in a dark room.

“It makes me happy to see that you like it,” Shoyo says, tilting his head to the side. “I wasn’t really sure what to get you, but you always look at your phone to see the time, so I thought it would be less of a hassle to check a watch instead of pulling your phone out of your pocket.”

Atsumu doesn’t know how to say,  _ It’s a habit I built waiting for the day the world tells me you’ve died _ , so he kisses Shoyo on the forehead and thanks him, because he’s thoughtful and he’s observant and he’s everything the world should want to be.

There’s a book of poetry collecting dust in the back of Atsumu’s closet, waiting for the day they’re married, and he can read the poems to Shoyo in the light of the rising sun. The Atsumu of today doesn’t know that such a day will never come, and yet the world lets him dream, regardless.

The day Shoyo dies is cold, even in the dead of summer. Tips of fingers turn blue, Atsumu can see his breath, and he thinks that this is the way things are probably supposed to be in a dying world. It’s three in the morning, like some sick fucking joke, and the light is red, and Atsumu sits in his car and wonders what the fuck he’s doing there when there are a thousand other places he could be.

Life is symbolic and synchronous and settled in moments where Atsumu wishes it could turn itself on its head. He’s not sure he understands why they’ve ended up like this after living his life so thoroughly and confidently. It’s retribution, probably, from the universe, pointed towards a man who has lived only for himself.

Death is a return to loneliness. Every fall hurts more than the last. Things have never been easy, though, he supposes.

You see, this isn’t the story of a man who falls from grace, burdened by loss, and this isn’t the story of a man who learns to find himself after the death of the man he loves. This is Atsumu’s story, pressed together and folded more times than it can bear, seams cracking. It’s a little about love, and a little about grieving, and Atsumu thinks that, more than anything, it’s about him.

Osamu asks him  _ why _ and Atsumu explains that it’s because he doesn’t want to be seen as a martyr. He doesn’t want the world to see them as a tragedy.

“We all die someday,” Atsumu says, feet planted firmly on the ground, “and more than anything, this is just a moment of many.”

“You love him, though.”

“It doesn’t change the fact that it was destined to happen eventually. One day I’ll die, and you’ll die, and our stories will just be someone’s memories. So I’m writing  _ my _ memories down. That way they’ll become someone else’s.” They talk in riddles and life lessons, and Atsumu realizes that it’s always been this way. “I’ll write yours down, too, if you want.”

Chin pressed against his palm, a pixelated Osamu shakes his head. “I’m okay dying just a memory.”

-

Drinking coffee is a habit, now. He wakes up, pours a cup, and checks his phone for the third time. It’s routine. There’s no one who can bring the dead back to life, and he places his phone down and takes a sip because that’s routine, too.

Atsumu has a secret.

The watch on his wrist ticks once and when he looks up, Shoyo is standing in front of him, smiling as if nothing has changed. And, he supposes, in this world, nothing has. Half a world away, Osamu looks up at the sky and wonders what Atsumu wanted to see one more time.

In a world full of superheroes, is Atsumu really all that strange?

Now, here’s the stipulation: Nothing can change, but there’s a little asterisk next to the rule. Atsumu’s never believed in the butterfly effect—not in the way the world thinks, anyways—and he’s never seen a repercussion for something small, like changing his coffee order, or waking up five minutes later on a Sunday. It’s big things, terrible things, that Atsumu can’t change.

Atsumu can have this power, but he can’t be a superhero, in return. So, he’ll live this life with Shoyo, unable to change the inevitable, a thousand and one times, until the universe tells him it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> well... sorry for always writing sad things. and sorry for most of those sad things being about superheroes.


End file.
